Wednesday, September 28, 2016

A whiff of schism: when different Catholics hold radically different beliefs

At a Catholic parish in Athy, Ireland, a lesbian couple who resigned
from parish ministry after entering a legal marriage has returned to
active participation—and to loud applause.

So now everyone is welcome in
St. Michael’s parish, right?Wrong.

Anthony Murphy, the editor of Catholic Voice—the man who
objected to the lesbian couple’s prominent role in parish life—has
received so many threats that he is, on the advice of the local police,
staying away from the parish.

The bitter dispute in this Irish parish is an extreme example of a
sort of conflict that has become sadly familiar within Catholic
communities. These conflicts erupted in the 1960s, peaked in the 1970s
and 1980s, then subsided for a few decades.

They have escalated again
during the past three years, since the election of Pope Francis.

They
involve fundamental disagreements about what it means to be Catholic:
debates between people with irreconcilable views, who sometimes suggest
(and sometimes forthrightly proclaim) that their adversaries must be
excluded from the Church.

These conflicts pose a clear and present
danger to the unity of the Catholic faith, and they will continue until
the fundamental questions that are now in dispute have been resolved.

Many good Catholics, motivated by the best of intentions, have sought
to downplay these tensions, to avert a showdown. But the conciliatory
approach cannot succeed when two sides are irreconcilable. A healthy
Church cannot long accept a situation in which some members anathematize
what other members endorse.

(The worldwide Anglican communion,
desperately fighting to avoid formal recognition of a schism that is
already apparent to the world, illustrates my point.)

Eventually the failure to answer a question is itself a
sort of answer: a judgment that truth and integrity are less important
than temporary peace and comfort. Such an answer is unworthy of
Christians.

Since the shocking case of St. Michael’s in Athy is the starting point for this essay, let me recount the story:

Jacinta O’Donnell and Geraldine Flanagan were prominent members of
the parish: both singing in the choir, one the choir director, the other
an extraordinary minister of the Eucharist. They were also lesbian
partners, united in a civil marriage ceremony. (Invitations to the
wedding were passed out at choir practice.)

When Anthony Murphy
registered an objection, saying that their active role in parish
ministry suggested an endorsement of their union, the pastor, Father
Frank McEvoy, brushed away the objection.

But Murphy’s protests made the
couple uncomfortable enough so that they voluntarily stepped down… for a
while.

The reaction from parishioners—support for O’Donnell and Flanagan,
hostility toward Murphy—brought the couple back into the sanctuary.

In
their triumphant return at a Saturday-evening Mass on September 10, they
led the choir in singing “I Will Follow Him”—which is not a hymn but a
1960s pop song, memorably performed by Whoopi Goldberg and others in the
film comedy Sister Act—and were rewarded with raucous,
shouting applause, which the pastor judged “well deserved.”

At the
conclusion of the Mass the couple stood before the altar together, arms
raised, fists clenched, to new applause.

They had won; Anthony Murphy
had lost.

But not just Anthony Murphy.

“Wherever applause breaks out in the liturgy because of some human
achievement, it is a sure sign that the essence of the liturgy has
totally disappeared,” wrote then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in The Spirit of the Liturgy.
It is impossible to believe that the “human achievement” prompting
applause in this case was the couple’s musical performance. (If you
listen to their rendition of the song, readily available on YouTube,
you’ll see what I mean.) No; this Catholic parish was saluting the
couple for their homosexual union. And Yes, the essence of the liturgy
had totally disappeared.

Father Brendan Kealy explained that he had intended to celebrate the 50th anniversary of a fellow priest’s ordination:

I was not present to promote or condone same-sex ‘marriage’ or what
appeared to be the apparent triumphant and victorious return of our
musical directors which seemed to become the focus of the evening. In my
opinion, the Mass was hijacked to support the cause of same-sex
‘marriage’ which is clearly in breach of Catholic Church teachings…I
felt Saturday evening’s principal purpose of the Mass was grossly lost
and I regret my participation.

Now what does it mean, when a Catholic priest regrets his
participation in the holy Sacrifice of the Mass? Something is seriously
wrong there, is it not?

Father Kealy recognized that the Eucharistic
liturgy had been exploited for political purposes—and for purposes that
are incompatible with Catholic teaching, at that.

Notice that the exploitation of the Mass for any reason is
unacceptable. Even if the distraction takes the form of a magnificent
musical performance, that is, as Cardinal Ratzinger argued, an abuse of
the liturgy. The Mass is Christ’s Sacrifice and the liturgy belongs to
Him; we have no right to turn it to our earthly purposes.

But when those purposes are at odds with the Church’s teachings, the
offense is even more grievous and the threat to Catholic unity more
acute. American Catholics have been wrestling with this difficulty for
years, as prominent Catholic politicians—from Kennedy and Cuomo through
Pelosi and Kerry to Biden and Kaine—have continued to approach Communion
despite their clear violation of Church precepts on key moral issues.

Timid prelates tell us that they do not want to turn the Communion line
into a political battleground, but that excuse misses the point. It
already is a political battleground; the politicians had made it so, by refusing to acknowledge their break with the Church.The canon law of the Church stipulates that those who “obstinately
persist in manifest grave sin”—such as those openly involved in illicit
sexual unions, and those who publically support the legalized
destruction of innocent human life—“are not to be admitted to holy
Communion,” primarily because of the scandal involved. But there is
another reason for this policy as well: a matter of that it means to be
“in communion” with the Catholic Church.

To say that we are “in communion” with other Catholics is to profess
that we believe what they believe, we worship as they worship, we are
members of the same faith and recognize each other as such. We are not
“in communion” with our Protestant friends, no matter how much we might
love and respect them; nor are they in communion with us, since they
“protest” various aspects of our faith. Nor are we fully “in communion”
with the Orthodox, even if their belief in the Eucharist matches our
own.

How can it be plausibly argued that Jacinta O’Donnell and Geraldine
Flanagan—and, apparently, most of the parishioners at that
Saturday-night travesty—share the same faith as Anthony Murphy and
Father Brendan Kealy? It cannot.

Murphy thought that the lesbian couple
should be excluded from parish leadership; the couple’s supporters made
it clear, on a sympathetic web site, that they rejoiced in having purged
Murphy’s “right-wing” views from their community. Clearly these people
cannot profess a common faith, until the major issues that separate them
have somehow been resolved. They are not “in communion” with each
other.

Nor is their problem unique. More and more frequently, Catholics
disagree on what it means to be in communion, what it means to be
Catholics. Radically different beliefs are held, and dramatically
different goals pursued, by different members within a parish, different
parishes within a diocese, different dioceses within the universal
Church.

(To take just one prominent example, the indissoluble nature of
the marriage bond apparently now means something different in
Philadelphia and Phoenix from what it means in Argentina and Germany.)

These divisions will continue to stretch the fabric of Catholicism,
straining the seams, threatening a serious rift, until they are
confronted.

The unity of the faith requires unity of belief, and unity
of belief requires clarity.